Casta Paintings: Picturing Social Order in 18th c. Mexico

In 18th-century New Spain (now Mexico), Casta paintings depicted the offspring resulting from the unions of Spaniards, Indians, and blacks Africans as different social groups called castas. This genre of paintings visualize a hierarchical social system that pinpoints race at the intersection of physical, economic, and social spaces. Magali M. Carrera discusses these paintings, their supposed classification of New Spain’s population, and the problematic and contradictory understandings of an individual’s social and political standing that the casta system perpetuated.
About the speaker:
Dr. Magali M. Carrera is a Chancellor Professor of Art History (Emerita) at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Her research examines maps and their relationship to nation-building discourses of nineteenth-century Mexico. She is the author of publications on the visual culture of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Mexico, including Imagining Identity in New Spain: Race, Lineage, and the Colonial Body in Portraiture and Casta Paintings (2003) and Traveling from New Spain to Mexico: Mapping Practice of Nineteenth-Century Mexico (2011).
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[@athenaartfoundation]

Fascinating! Thank you for sharing.

[@AlexanderNixonArtHistory]

20 minutes in, still haven't really looked at any Casta paintings.

[@ruthojen]

Holy Cow! so rigid. Huipuies are pull over tops, with patterns/designs that originated in Extremadura. The garments indicated the origen of the Indian wearer, eg which village they worked/lived in; served as a visual walking id card, therefore easy to detect runaways

[@vidastarr323]

At 56:14 she describes slavery then says it's not the type of slavery we think of... But it's the exact type of slavery we think of... So what did she mean by that?

[@tramasrarasoddplots]

El Museo del Prado has a couple of lectures named Tornaviaje that explain a bit more. There is also a book named Before Mestizaje which deals with the caste system. The Caste System and Colonial México are a heck of a long time, more than 200 years. So, when we talk about slavery or the caste system, it was something that change over the decades. It was also a fluid system that shifted depending on the situation. There were slaves in mines and farms enduring brutality but also enslaved nurses and public officials who were higly educated. Slaves were a social status and tho most Slaves belonged to Spaniards, Indigenous and Black people of high social status also onwned Slaves. A Morisco was not what we understand of Morisco. It was the child of a Spaniard and a Mulatto. However, because all this terms are fluid, it does mean religion (which is another can of worms). Blacks were associated with Islam. Thus, although a Morisco was "better" than a black person bc they had more Spaniard blood, they would never be recognized as Spaniards. It's a whole mess and depending on the expert, you will probably get slightly different answers. Hope this long answer doesn't confuse you more

[@vidastarr323]

@@tramasrarasoddplots Thank you for explaining! I'll check out the lectures if I can find em!

[@AlexanderNixonArtHistory]

I think she is distinguishing between house slaves and field slaves.

[@vidastarr323]

I'm the chart at 17:00 is inaccurate by using the term "Black." The #4 painting is labeled as "Los Moros" in some casta painting sets and those were specifically Moors. They were clearly at the higher part of the casta system. If you look at the painting and how they are dressed, they were very well dressed. If you look at painting 11 in thst same set, there is another category mentioned "La Negra." La Negra is lower in the caste and dressed in rags. I really wish someone would talk about this distinction more between La Mora and La Negra.